Ballerinas embody grace, strength, and dedication—all characteristics photographer Lucy Gray saw in her working mother of five. But before Gray met prima ballerina Katita Waldo, she had yet to find the perfect representation of a woman striving to “have it all." Her new book Balancing Acts: Three Prima Ballerinas Becoming Mothers is the documentation of 15 years spent with three mothers at the height of their mentally and physically demanding careers. Read More

If you haven't heard by now, singer-songwriter Annie Lennox has called out fellow performer Beyoncé for not being a "true" feminist. In a September interview with PrideSource, Lennox stated:
“I would call [Beyoncé] feminist lite… It's tokenistic to me. I mean she's a phenomenal artist... but I'd like to sit down (with her)... and hear what [she] truly think[s]. I see a lot of it as [artists] taking the word hostage and using it to promote themselves, but I don't think they necessarily represent wholeheartedly the depths of feminism... Read More

As the unprecedented Ebola outbreak continues to ravage Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, a startling fact regarding the death tolls has come to light: 75% of those who die from the virus are women. That's because most of the primary caregivers, nurses, and cross-border traders in those counties are female.
Specialists say that the disease is fairly manageable as long as those in close proximity with the sick avoid bodily fluids or other forms of physical contact. Read More

It's a damn shame that women still feel any sort of external pressure to procreate, especially when it's a totally independent decision. Yet, here we have a few dozen paparazzi and interviewers demanding an explanation from twenty-five female celebrities sans children. Zooey Deschanel had us all nodding with her quick rebuttal to the question: “I'm not going to answer that question. I'm not mad at you for asking that question, but I've said it before: I don't think people ask men those questions. Read More

I’ll never understand the logic behind a society that both accepts the unnecessary sexualization of female bodies for advertisements and shames public breastfeeding. Seriously, it doesn’t make sense. The entire point of having breasts is lactation and when a baby is hungry, do we seriously expect women to deprive them just because someone doesn’t want to see a boob? Women literally have been asked to stop feeding their hungry babies because it makes them uncomfortable to see a boob. But, it’s a little more than that and we all know it. Read More

Might be a nice surprise--it probably doesn't happen to her much anymore. Sure, sure, there's no way you left it to the last minute. You're not one of those kids. You definitely already got a card for Mother's Day.
Not. We've all been there: scrambling to make a sucky Mother's Day card at the last second, scribbling furiously as you hear mimosa glasses clinking in the next room. I usually end up with some bubble letters on the outside, something like, "YOU ROCK, MOM!" and then on the inside, maybe something that rhymes.
Well have no fear: BUST is here. Read More

If you have not already seen the World Toughest Job vid floating around your news feed, take a look before you read on. It's pretty damn sweet.
This video is not only a clear reminder of the undeniable love and dedication required to be a parent and mother, but it is also a lesson about women's work. Labor has historically been divided along gender lines in families; women are in charge of the the home, and men handle outside work. Read More

If you’ve ever checked out the [ETC] category of Craigslist’s jobs section, you’ve seen them, interspersed between dog-walking gigs and ONLINE SURVEYS IN ALL CAPS: the ubiquitous call for egg donors.
They’re looking for Jewish women, Asian women, East Indian and Italian women, women with blue eyes and high SAT scores. Most ads promise compensation in the $4,000 – $10,000 range, and in the summer of 2011, I was a postgrad who had just moved to New York City with only a thousand-dollar tax refund and a suitcase to my name. Read More

When we think about motherhood and photography, we think of “post-baby bodies” and the tabloid-front image of a glamorous women cradling her shiny-clean newborn bundle. Even in progressive contemporary society, various media present the mother as glamorous, perfect, and inhumanly flawless.
In her stunning series Portrait of The Mother, the photographer Joy Christiansen Erb provides an alternate vision of motherhood. Shooting her own children and domestic life, the artist presents simply seen evidences of her familial love. Read More

The premise of the New York Times’s recent piece on the stay-at-home husbands of female Wall Street execs was a must-click the minute I heard about it: the so-called “house husband” is one of my favorite answers to the nebulous question of how to Have It All. The article focuses on a growing class of families in wealthy suburban areas that are putting aside the traditional nuclear family structure for a more progressive and profitable alternative. Read More